The Community Part of Community Art

For a long time I didn't have very good friends. There were people I was close with, people I spent time with, people I saw everyday, even people that I thought I would know for the rest of my life, but it wasn't until college that I truly began to build my community.

My college years created the two closest friendships that I have, that I have ever had. Through the past four or so years with these two wonderful women, and with the many other incredible people who have helped to shape who I am, I've learned what it means to be close to someone. For me, the closest form of intimacy doesn't come from sharing secrets, sex, or history. It comes from the exchange of ideas.

There comes a point when I'm so deeply wrapped in a conversation that I lose track of where my thoughts end and my companion's begin; when the idea forming in my mind comes out of their mouth. It is through these discourses that I discovered my passion for human connection, through whatever means available to me, and then came up with a way to channel that passion into an actual life.

I've lost count of the number of times that a new idea has formed while my mouth is moving, butting its way into whatever conversation that inspired its birth. That's how I first came up with my plan to start a community art center, one month into the fall semester of my junior year of college. I pulled out my notebook just now and flipped to September 9th, 2009, the day the idea was formed. A single page of notebook paper is covered in messy pencil with The Salon (the original title of my center) scrawled across the stop. I can still remember my hand moving across the now familiar page as I sat in the dining hall of my college campus, waiting for my closest friend to get out of her art history class so I could explode my new idea, that I got from talking to my own art history professor, onto her.

I do indeed tend to explode when I have an idea. My sister calls it "bubbly Miranda" which, despite not carrying the gravity I would like, is the most accurate description of the state I enter when a new idea is forming. Words and phrases bubble out of me, bursting into the world through the conversation of whoever I am talking with at the moment. My eyes become cartoonishly wide and my hands, or rather my entire arms, swing from place to place as if I am preforming as a storyteller.

Since the birth of The Salon, I have talked with what must be over a hundred people about it, always expanding and developing both myself, my idea, and the person with whom I am talking. Through these conversations, which increased dramatically when I moved to Boston and began my master's degree at Lesley University, The Salon has evolved into Creative Spaces and, most recently, CATCH Art: the Creative Haven. (Get it? It's a self-retaining acronym! Eek!)

I've spoken with friends, family members, mentors, strangers, even people I don't like all that much, and they have each added their own flavor to my idea, if only by listening as I talked to them. I've read books and articles, started writing this blog, filled up countless notebooks, and created endless files on my computer as I continue my external thought development. Currently, I have a ten year plan for my art center. I have no idea what it will look like in the end because I have no idea who I will talk to in the time between now and then. All I know is that every conversation I have continues to build the community of people who have heard and helped with my idea and with the development of myself.

For the past few weeks I've been thinking about writing this post, drawing attention to the people part of community art. I spend a lot of time writing and thinking about the children I teach and the teachers I learn from, but just as important, if not more important, are the people who I teach and learn with. The people who listen to me, who talk to me, who dream with me.

There was quote at the beginning of one of my classes this semester which I have not been able to get out of my mind; "I write so I can find out what I am thinking" by Jerome Bruner. Obviously, just glance down the page, this is true for me. But I would have to say, more accurately, I converse so I can find out what I am thinking, and once I know what I think, I know what I am going to do.

Basement Music

When I was young(er), I used to see the videos of 20-something year olds fervently playing music in their livings rooms and basements late at nights, getting off day long shifts to come home just to make music. I always found it a little funny, these people who played late at night not to get famous or to go anywhere, but just... because. It seemed to me like they were adults holding on to childish dreams when they should be doing adult-things (whatever that's supposed to mean).

It wasn't until recently, when I truly began my adult life living on my own, supporting myself, working, etc. that I began to truly appreciate these secret gatherings. Music has always been a deeply personal art for me. I took classical piano for twelve or so years, sitting by myself in the practice room for hours. During those hours I began to fiddle with writing my own compositions, first classically and then folk-ily. I would sing my heart out while banging away on the piano, momentarily blanking out the rest of the world that was only separated from me by thin, white walls and the sound of my own music.

Those thin walls were the first thing that let other people hear my music, whether they wanted to or not. Sometimes music major friends of mine would come in to see who it was, or would say hello when I came out. Slowly, I began to bashfully invite people in while I played. At first it was just my family, but then I took a deep breath and moved on to close friends.

My breakthrough came when I brought my guitar to the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival for the first time, after my entire life spent going to listen to other people play music. That was where I got my first taste of the music community. I had performed before, in camp talents shows and music recitals, but there's something different about sitting in a group of people, none of whom are professional musicians, and just seeing what comes out.

I've finally come to a point where my hands don't shake every time I try to play in front of people, and I can finally listen to recordings of myself while only cringing instead of running out of the room. As I settle into my new life in Boston, I've become part of a jam group that meets after work in living-rooms and basements as we all hold onto the childish glee that comes with simply making music. I continue to write my songs, which have slowly but surely gotten better, and for now, that's enough.

My Stunt as a Storyteller

At this very moment I am absolutely elated, sky-high on performance energy that hasn't gone away even though I finished telling stories over an hour ago. That's right, my performance wasn't some theatrical debut it was my debut as a true storyteller.

In my recent class on storytelling I'd been exposed to what was about to happen today. I read articles about how storytelling can capture any audience because the human mind is intrinsically organized to understand stories, I told stories to my classmates and heard them tell their own, and I even went to story-telling events and felt myself captured by the storytellers in front of me. But until today, I remained skeptical.

I was skeptical of my own power. Here I was, listening to and reading about storytellers at all different levels of all different ages. It was easy to tell who the masters were, the ones who made you actually see what they were telling so much so that you couldn't look away. It was also easy to tell the people who weren't born into storytelling, for whatever reason. And not everyone is. Everyone can learn, surely, but there are some people who, for whatever reason, take naturally to the art form of storytelling.

I wasn't sure if I could be one of those. Sure, I've always told long winded stories (that's basically what this blog is, stories about my experiences with art). Theatrics have also always been a part of my repertoire, earning my the family nickname of Tallulah after Talluluah Bankhead. From years of singing and acting my diaphragm is strong enough that I can make myself heard in a gymnasium full of summer campers without completely ruining my voice. I've always known that I come alive when I'm in front of people; I thrive of off human interaction.

But could I tell stories?

As of now I can comfortably say that I can. At Story Stomp, a festival dedicated to "connect[ing] the imaginative worlds of reading and art" at Springstep in Medford that took place today, I performed in a section called "Storytelling with Miranda." I told three stories, The Enormous Carrot, The Gold in the Chimeny, and Stone Soup. After a day of dancing, cupcakes, and theater-movement activities I wasn't sure how the children would react to being asked to sit and listen.

The room was a wonderful chaos when I stepped in, with children playing tag, parents talking, and arts and crafts all over the floor. While we were gathering the children together I had them all do a little movement exercise that I used to do in choir so that they would realize something was starting again and then they all sat down.

For at least half an hour 35-50 (I'm horrible at guessing numbers) pairs of eyes were trained on me as I exaggerated all my usual antics, turning what are normally huge hand gestures into leaping body gestures. Both the children and their parents moved along with me, sometimes as volunteers, sometimes supplying information, and sometimes because a child just wanted to get a little closer.

Unlike when I play music or act in a play, I wasn't nervous. Beforehand, yes. But once the stories started all I had to do was relinquish control and let them happen. And oh man, did they happen. I'm not sure who had more fun, the children, the parents, or me.

At the end of the last story Allie Fiske, the wonderful woman who asked me to tell my stories, and I did a little configuration so as soon as I said "...and then music started to play and they all began to dance!" there was indeed music and the children and their parents did indeed get up to dance with me. Once the music was over and the last line of the song was done, one little girl who couldn't have been more than three years old came straight up to me and said "But that was only two stories!"

"It actually was three," I told her.

"But it was so short! I wanted to hear more!"

Can you imagine? A three year old who wanted to sit still and listen to stories after over half an hour of already doing so! Her and multiple other children and their parents came up to me saying thank you and giving me compliments that at the beginning of the day I wasn't sure if I would deserve. But none of their compliments felt as wonderful as hearing everyone saying "Stooooone Soup!" along with me, or dancing as characters in a story, or hearing some children ask to hear more stories.

As I left, a woman who had been watching through one of the many windows in the room said "You have a lot of energy!"

"I just never grew up," I replied.

"Don't ever," she told me with a grin.

I responded that I didn't plan to, and indeed I don't. As I bounced home, swinging my arms like one of the characters in my stories, I thought with my own ear-to-ear grin, this is something I could do for the rest of my life.

Dancing in the... Museum?

Last Thursday I took a group of children to the MFA for a late night visit. By 6 o'clock, which is only the time that we get there, the children are typically already hungry and antsy after having been at school all day and then at the club for three hours. Despite this, they normally do quite well in the museum and are excited to be around the art and to be outside of their normal environment.

The whole way there the kids were singing along to the radio and to each others ipods/phones. When, for a moment, I slipped past a station of rock music from some previous decade there were giggles and cries of "What is this?" "Is this music?" and my personal favorite, "No offense to whoever wrote this song, but this is weird." To my ears, this music was perfectly normal and, to run the risk of sounding like an old cranky lady, much more appropriate for the kids than the songs they listen to at 8-10 years old which all seem to reference sex or drugs with varying degrees of subtlety.

The visit itself went well, apart from a short bickering between two girls and some discrepancies over eating in the can. The kids still hold a certain awe for the museum and the artist we were working with. The project wrapped up a little earlier than planned, so the kids and I took a stroll through the museum on the way back out.

In the Contemporary wing there was a small country band set up and we decided to stay for a song. One or two of the kids started to dance, sticking their feet out in front of them in their interpretation of country dancing. Soon enough there were twelve children bobbing up and down in the middle of the new contemporary art wing at the Museum of Fine Arts.

I walked over to the two employees running the event and asked if it was okay that the children were dancing.

"Of course!" cried one of them, holding her clipboard to her chest as she grinned at the kids. "This is what we want to have happen. We want it to be fun!"

It was fun.

The handful of people gathered to listen to the musicians glanced back to watch the group of flailing children, all maintaining a respectful distance from the art on the walls. The musicians played louder, the audience started to nod along, and the kids were all for it. When the song ended we all applauded, formed a line, and walked out.

The children giggled as we made our way to the exit, pausing so that each of them could touch the Abraham Lincoln Statue, the only piece of art in the museum where the sign says "PLEASE TOUCH." In one evening the kids and seen art, reflected on it, created from it, done something "forbidden" (touching an art piece), and had fun.

As I drove the children back across the Tobin Bridge, listening to them sing to the radio once again, I thought about how the kids would have reacted if they had heard the same music that they were dancing to on the radio. I can only imagine the squeals and giggles of "what is this?" But when they were faced with the real live musicians, they couldn't help but dance.

Originality in the 21st century

When I began to work as an artist I wanted to be completely original, wholly singular. I housed a strong disdain for art history; I didn't want to learn from others or to be influenced by anything. To be influenced at all negated my idea of originality. I wanted to believe that I created in a vacuum, that my thoughts were completely my own. For the same reason I avoided, and still avoid, drugs of any kind, even caffeine for the most part. I didn't want to have to question whether it was my imagination and ingenuity or the influence of some outside factor that created my art.

This was before I took my first art history class, before I worked in a studio with fellow artists and had boundless creative conversations, before I read art criticism and educational theory. In Freire's words, I was ignoring the "tension between the individual and the social practice." In regards to my Enneagram type, which is a 7 for anyone who knows what that means, I was emphasizing my narcissism. I was distrustful, viciously independent, and felt like I needed to prove my artistic integrity.

I vividly remember the day I realized that I had already been influenced, that my culture had already formed and informed me. My associations, my choices, my very ideas had been influenced by the world around me since I first opened my eyes and learned what it meant to scream. After that realization, I opened the floodgates. I had always read anything and everything, unconsciously absorbing the thoughts of my favorite authors, artists, and teachers. But at that point I started to do so consciously, recognizing the connections and revelations that other people could already provide. I learned that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, or the bicycle, or the car. Those were already done and I could use those ideas to move onto something new and wonderful; something completely my own and yet indebted to the rich history of the world.

My eyes opened to the power of having people agree with you and the joy of reading what you already thought. When I talked about this with my sister, she paraphrased for me what she believes is a George Orwell quote: "The greatest books are the ones that tell us what we already know." Because in this large and lonely world, its always nice to realize that you aren't alone in your thoughts.

When I studied and read for art history, psychology, music, and my many other classes or talked endlessly with about anything and everything anyone who would talk back, I found a ready-made support system, a vibrant creative community that has existed for millennia and that to become part of all I had to do was acknowledge its existence. Suddenly, I was much less lonely.

Now when I read something new, the page is covered with exclamation points and stars. I veer away from drawing hearts around passages to preserve some semblance of dignity, and because hearts don't encircle paragraphs well. When I read, look at art, or find some wonderfully exciting person to talk to, I can barely keep myself contained. I can never keep myself still. My hands fly wider and faster the more enthusiastic I get and I edge forward in my seat until I fly back only to edge forward again. Journals, scraps of paper, and texts to myself contain the ideas that I simply could not keep in my head anymore because I wanted to remember them, to share them as others have shared their ideas with me.

I've always hated when people say that there is no such thing as originality, that everything has already been done. If that were true we would cease to move forward, to make progress, to create. Simply because something has already been written, has already been painted, doesn't mean that when I do it again it isn't original. It is through our unique lenses of the world that we create our originality. Degas's sketch of Botticeli's Birth of Venus may have been a copy of that painting, but it is the original of his sketch. If I were to sketch my own version of Degas's sketch, it would be a copy of a copy. But it would also be a copy of an original, and an original in its own right.

With this in mind, I embrace the ready-made creativity, ingenuity, community of my predecessors and my contemporaries. I put my ideas out into the world and wait to see what new connections will come back.

The Start of the next Story

I do any art form I can get my hands on; my artistic curiosity is something that I both enjoy and take pride in. There are, of course, art forms that I am more closely connected to right now, oil painting, creative writing, knitting, song writing, and pottery to name a few, but give me anything and I'll try it.

This mentality is why I chose electives in poetry and storytelling rather than my more comfortable music and visual art for grad school this spring. And, so far, what a good choice! This past weekend I spent my Saturday and Sunday from 8 am to 5 pm in a rather ugly, sparse classroom. Oh, the horror, right?

Wrong.

The best thing about going to an art/education school is that the teachers know how to teach and they know their art form. Abigail Jefferson, the instructor for my weekend course, isn't only a wonderful and engaging teacher, she's an inspiring storyteller. With her we learned about storytelling through storytelling. Throughout the long weekend I don't think we sat down for more than an hour at a time. This comes from Abigail's experience with middle schoolers, but also speakers to her knowledge as a performer and teacher about attention spans and how to best engage people.

While preparing and excitedly waiting for this class, I found myself noticing the stories I was already telling everyday and remembering the stories that I had been told throughout my life. There are stories that I forgot that I knew and stories that I forget how I know, ones through which I hear my mother's voice and Jim Weiss's on cassette. Yes, even I am old enough to remember cassettes.

Through the class I also realized that stories are, and always have been, how I learn. I've been blessed by whatever combination of nature, nurture, or spiritual force you personally prefer with a sharp memory. I can hear things once and teach about the material later in the day. (That has happened. More than once. Bad planning, I know). But during the weekend I realized that stories and discovery aren't just good tools for teaching and learning, they are the best.

Give me facts, numbers, and names and I can read them over three times and know them for the test tomorrow. But then I promptly forget them because I just don't care about those specifics. There are people whose life work is based off of such specifics and facts, but I am thankfully not one of them. I could describe the entire catalogue of an artist's work, the stories behind each piece, and the artist's biography, but forget their name until something reminds me of it hours later.

But to tell stories you don't need verbatim, memorized facts. Indeed, memorization often impedes a good story. You need to absorb and understand the story itself. Then, when you go back to tell it, the details can be formed in the moment, based on the connection and the energy you are experiencing. Storytelling is a trust exercise between you and your brain, one that I need to practice. I often lose what I know because I over-think and second guess myself rather than trusting not what I've memorized, but what I've learned, what I know. In psychology, that's called psuedostupidity. (A random fact I remember from my second year of college not because it was the most important, but because I could directly connect it to my life... and it made me laugh.)

From my reading for another class, I can see that I'm far from the only person who believes in storytelling as an incredible vehicle for teaching. In Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, Paulo Freire, the father of current educational thought and the archangel of Lesley schooling, describes how he teaches writing. Rather than reducing reading to rules of grammar and structure he taught these rules as "objects to be discovered within the body of the texts." He goes on to say that "the students did not have to memorize the description mechanically, but rather learn its underlying significance." Freire was on the forefront of changing teachers from the fountain of information to the leaders of discussion and discovery, or the storytellers.

As soon as I read Freire's words, my brain clicked into gear. I wasn't thinking of something that I remembered from my days of rote memorization, but something that I knew from listening to Abigail, taking part in her stories, and making my own stories; that human connection is the best way to teach and to be taught.

Are they getting anything?

Like any good artist/thinker, every once in a while I have an existential crisis. Is there any point? Does looking at pretty pictures ever actually matter? Am I making any difference? Why should we do anything when in the end we all die and the earth gets blown up by the sun? That sort of thing.

In the past two years or so, and even more intensely in the past six months, I haven't found these questions repeating themselves in my head. At this point in time, my life direction is clearer than it has ever been. I love what I learn, what I do at work, the people in my life, where I live, pretty much everything. It's a little surreal to tell the truth, but that train of thought is for another time.

Despite the current absence of my existential crises, I am constantly shoring up arguments for my rational self to use when they reappear in my life once again. At work yesterday a perfect example presented itself to me. I had a good chunk of time in the afternoon between two classes I was teaching at the MFA and it turns out that my co-worker and friend was in the same predicament. She suggested that we go to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum since it is literally right up the street and I'd never been there (or so I thought).

I eagerly accepted and we made our way through the strangely warm January day to our neighbor museum, wearing our IDs on our red MFA lanyards. As we entered the new wing of the Gardner, which architecturally looks very much like the new wing at the MFA, we were kindly greeted by museum workers with bright yellow Gardner lanyards and I had to wonder if our separate museum superiors hadn't planned the obvious contrast.

Walking through the new wing was lovely. Looking at art and places where art is displayed and talked about is always interesting, particularly when you have good company. But my new found weapon against future existential crises came when my friend and I walked through the glass tunnel connecting the new wing to the original Gardner museum. As I entered the stone and brick mansion, I had the strangest feeling of deja vu. I shook it off, knowing that sometimes that just happens, and followed my friend in the main hallway of the museum that circles around the famous courtyard.

Finally, a memory that had tickled my mind for years snapped into place as I stared at the small hallway on my right.

There are some memories which are so specific that I can see bits of them in my mind as clearly as if I am looking at a video or a photograph. The hallway I saw yesterday belonged to one such memory. For years it had floated around my mind and every once in a while I would try to place it. Could it be the New York cloisters which I went to on a 2nd grade field trip? Or some scene from a medieval movie? Maybe it was from one of the cathedrals I saw in Italy that for some reason felt like it had happened a long time along?

Actually, it was the first floor hallway on the right side of the courtyard in the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. Despite the fact that last time I saw it I was about a foot and a half lower, I recognized it instantly.

In fifth grade my class took an overnight field trip to Boston. We did all the usual historical and tourist routes, which is what I remember. However, apparently, we also went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum and the image of the cloister-like hallway in a building that had once been a woman's home engrained itself on my ten-year-old mind.

So how does this argue against my future existential crises?

Something that can be hard to tell as a teacher is whether you've really gotten through to your students or not. Of course there are the obvious responses, the glowing eyes, bright smiles, and exclamations of joy. But what about the kids who aren't as overt with their responses? Are they still getting anything?

I still don't have a definite answer. However, I can now say from personal experience, sometimes people are absorbing information even when they don't realize it. Ideas you were taught in your youth could be recalled from your memory banks at any point. And no, not everything will stick for every child. But there's still hope that at some point in their lives your students will have a moment of eye-opening memory that brings back some dormant lesson you taught them. Maybe they'll feel a deep connection to an art piece or a museum that you brought them to. Or maybe that's just me. Either way, existential crisis: averted.